Some thoughts on STEM subjects at school on International Women's Day

It's International Women's Day 2017, the day of the year when women who support their sisters all over the world get asked by their male colleagues and friends, 'Why don't we have an International Men's Day?' - to which we roll our eyes and reply, 'It's on November 19th'.

International Women's Day is just one day, but the facts will still be facts tomorrow. Women are under-represented in manufacturing - indeed in all STEM roles, despite the fact more females are accepted into University than males. But do the roots of gender imbalance in STEM subjects and careers reach further down the tree than tertiary education?

While women dominate or level peg with men on university courses for social sciences, business, law, health, welfare, humanities and education, there is still a significant gap in engineering, manufacturing, construction, science, mathematics and computing.

According to the most recent data available (collected in 2014 by Eurostat), across the 28 member states, 57.9 per cent of all tertiary education graduates are women.

In science, mathematics and computing subjects, however, there is a gap of 15.2 percentage points between male and female graduates, with women accounting for 42.4 per cent of students graduating in these specialist fields.

An even vaster gender disparity is apparent in engineering, manufacturing and construction, where women account for just 27.2 per cent of graduates next to the male contingent of 72.8 per cent.

Careers guidance

The EU's Mind the Gap project is calling for better careers guidance processes as the current systems are failing to promote STEM studies among young women - and young people in general. The project concluded that students generally feel insecure with their abilities in mathematics, which in turn affects their confidence in technology and science. Within science, students also feel more confident in the aspects of their subjects that relate to health, business and biology, rather than the more advanced technical and mathematic sides of science.

The project surveyed 47 school age children in the Netherlands where female representation in STEM subjects at University is below average, with just 23.1 per cent in engineering, manufacturing and construction and only 27.4 per cent in science, mathematics and computing.

The results showed that only 17 per cent of students of both sexes preferred scientific studies to humanities. When asked why they are put off scientific studies or feel less confident working on these subjects than arts and social-based subjects, the most common responses were that their perceived shortcomings in maths were an obstacle, and that they do not 'identify themselves doing these subjects'. The youngsters that are STEM students all have family (predominantly their fathers) in STEM careers.

"Education and gender equality are very closely connected, with the classroom providing an ideal place to break-down gender stereotypes early on," said Jolanta Reingarde, Senior Researcher, European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE). "However, educational settings can also reinforce them. For example, through textbooks which show women working in traditional roles, such as nurses and teachers and men working as engineers and scientists."

Role models

Mind the Gap's conclusion of its study of STEM subject gender disparity in the UK, the Netherlands and Spain stated that a lack of role models in studies and jobs was one of the top common denominators across all three countries, while the home remains to be one of the most influential environments for young people deciding what they want to do when they leave school.

Unless the tide turns in terms of representation, it seems the gradual closure of the gender gap in STEM could stall, after all, as Director of the Department of Engineering at Facebook Jocelyn Goldfein was recently quoted by New Scientist as saying: "The main reason we are not getting more female computer scientists is because there are very few female computer scientists."

On International Women's Day 2017, the European Parliament's Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality is holding a series of talks and workshops. 'Women in STEM: Progress Stalled of Being Eroded?' is the first workshop on the agenda organised by the European Institute for Gender Equality.